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mjn writes "Game designer and academic Ian Bogost announces Cow Clicker, a Facebook game implementing the mechanics of the Facebook-games genre stripped to their core. You get a cow, which you can click on every six hours. You earn additional clicks if your friends in your pasture also click. You can buy premium cows with 'mooney,' and also use your mooney to buy more clicks. You can buy mooney with real dollars, or earn some free bonus mooney if you spam up your feed with Cow Clicker activity. A satire of Facebook games, but actually as genuine a game as the non-satirical games are. And people actually play it, perhaps confirming Bogost's view that the genre of games is largely just 'brain hacks that exploit human psychology in order to make money,' which continue to work even when the users are openly told what's going on."

to gain experience you click the cow. when you do, you level up. your new powers are the ability to spend more in game currency to allow you to click on cows more to gain even more experience and level up more.

it's a minimalist presentation of the same ultimate waste of time typical RPGs are. the joke is YOU.

(side note: "RPG game"... really? did you use your PIN number on an ATM machine to buy that typical RPG game?)

You fool. I don't just use ANY PIN number: I use my personal PIN number on those nifty automated ATM machines! Then I use that money to buy a MASSIVE MMORPG game and some extra RAM memory so my CPU unit isn't constantly putting stuff on the SDD drive. Gee, I hope my video card can handle all those CG graphics...

*cough*Alright. I'm done.Strike me down, so that I may become stronger than you could ever imagine. Or mod me up. Your pick.

>>>having to pay extra for certain items/powers/etc. are typical with most RPGs today on today's consoles

Really? I guess it's a good thing I didn't upgrade higher than a Gamecube, PS2, or Xbox then. I'm not laying down real money just to buy fake swords and crap. And anything more than $20 for a game is too much in my opinion. ----- I play RPGs mainly for the story and characters. If the RPG doesn't have a compelling story, then I'll usually get bored, sell it, and play Dance Dance Revolutio

I'm pretty damn selective about my friends. Quality over quantity. I've seen a single update from a single person (she was 16) who needed logs or some shit for a cabin. Her uncle gave her some, and it's now been 3-4 months since that single update.

I guess I can be pretty damn proud of my technically literate, non idiotic friends and family.

Really - my extended family who are a 1000 miles away are my friends, a couple of good ones from high school, a couple of good ones from college, a few former coworke

Well.. the "RPG" games that I've played on Facebook involve repeatedly clicking the same button to "complete quests" to gain exp to level so that you open up a new button that you can click repeatedly to complete quests to gain exp to level. As far as I can tell, there was no maximum level and the storyline was simply "You steal a car." "You steal a car." "You have failed to steal a car." which then evolved to "You rob a bank." "You rob a bank." "You have failed to rob a bank."

I've never actually played a Facebook game, but I've had friends try to draw me in by demonstrating the games at length. So I know the mechanics of a few popular ones.

Facebook games have, from what I've seen, three goals:1. Keep you in the game regularly by setting events up so you have to visit frequently.2. Send messages in your name to all of your friends to "join me in this fun game that's the awesomest thing ever!!!!!".3. Hopefully occasionally sucker someone into spending real money to level up or

She has no special powers other than licking frat boys like a lollipop.;-) After I reached level 24 and realized I had gained almost nothing (a few clothes), I quit the game. It was just a waste of time.

You know, it's entirely possible to have a Facebook account without spending excessive amounts of time on it. Nothing forces you to play these insipid games, update your profile every day, or respond to every message you get.

I have a Facebook account just so people don't think I've died or been mangled in some kind of accident. I hardly spend any time on FB at all, which leaves plenty of time to emit smugness about it on Slashdot.

As I indicate in a response to a sibling, the deciding factor in me quitting Facebook was Mark Zuckerberg's statements characterizing a desire for privacy as disingenuous and socially unacceptable. He can think what he chooses to, and I can choose not to do business with him.

I pretty much quit the Zynga games (and by extension, pretty much Facebook) cold turkey a few months ago, and savor that extra hour or two I have per day (to post to Slashdot, apparently:P ) But never looked back.

I reached level 200-something in Mafia Wars on two accounts (the only way to guarantee you always have energy and items) and also had a modest start with Starfleet Commander and Extreme, as well as a little bit of Yoville (which almost seemed like it could have been a legitimate visual chat platf

I'd be concerned if this game didn't make a load of money. The people who play those games should be filtered out of life by having their money taken away from them until they don't have enough to pay for the basics of life.
Facebook games are pretty much just a hopped up version of those retarded viral text based games that you need to sign your friends up for so you can go up the ranks. Internet text based games turned into lame graphics based ones.
There will always be morons out there willing to pay real money for fake things that can and will disappear without warning as soon as the creators decide to sell the business (or quit because they've made enough money) or move on to other things (other interests or legal issues).

I sometimes wonder if my brain chemistry is wonky - I don't see the appeal of slot machines at all. I've tried a few, in a few different places, and it was just paying money to be bored. I get equally bored by gameplay that is supposed to exploit the same mechanic - grinding in WoW or Diablo or whatever. The whole "random reward" thing leaves me cold.

On the other hand, I still find MOO2 addictive. I guess I'm too fascinated by optimizing.

A movie is a message the creators are passing to the viewer. A movie can inform and make you think. A movie, like a book, can transform the viewer's understanding of the world. Of course, I'm not taking about The Hangover; I'm talking about a movie by Fellini, for example.Claiming movies to be nothing more than entertainment is so reductive.

With sports I agree, though. Playing them is more than entertainment, though.

With sports I agree, though. Playing them is more than entertainment, though.

I think that's silly. Some sports fans are led to think by watching sports, just as much as some movie viewers are led to think by watching movies (and some just get a short thrill of entertainment).

There is drama in sports... but it's largely unscripted. A player who has overcome personal hardship to excel in their sport (like a no-hitter in baseball pitched by a one-armed man); a player who fights through injury and demonstrat

And people actually play it, perhaps confirming Bogost's view that the genre of games is largely just 'brain hacks that exploit human psychology in order to make money,' which continue to work even when the users are openly told what's going on."

Meh. Slashdot's been doing this for years.

We know it's pointless, but we keep clicking that reply button. And when they deliberately make the stories misleading and poorly edited, they get even more clicks.

I was under the impression Advertising only makes money if people click on the ads,

Some online advertising works that way, such as Google AdWords. But typically not display ads of the kind that slashdot runs. Those are paid by impression, not by the click. So, every time a page loads on slashdot that doesn't have ads disabled, slashdot gets income.

Actually, not only does slashdot make money off of ads (as several other people pointed out), but you can voluntarily give them real money [slashdot.org] for "enhanced" service. That's pretty much exactly the same model as most FB games (or so I heard [tvtropes.org]).

Making real people laugh is a HELL of a lot more important than artificially boosting virtual "karma". In fact, I'm frequently surprised when people mod my jokes (which most of my postings are) as "Informative" or "Insightful" when I was really going for "Funny". Trust me, I'm a Buddhist, I don't need any more Karma!

Speaking of Jokes and Buddhists, I'm sure we've all heard this one before.

So a Buddhist monk goes up to a hot dog vendor. Vendor asks him "What'll it be?" and the monk replies, "Make me one with everything."

*Badoom psh*

So the vendor fixes him up with a dog, with all the fillings. The Monk hands him a $20 bill and the vendor puts it in the till and smiles at him. The monk, a little confused, asks him "What about my change?" and the vendor replies, "Change comes from within."

Many times the Informative ratings are from people who laughed but wanted to give you a better Karma rating. If you've told a joke, think of the Inf/Ins ratings as Funny++. I'm not sure how that started, but it's been going on for about 3 years.

I had great karma IRL but burned it all about four years ago. It was worth it, even if I have to start as a freakin' ant again.

I'm not sure I see the disincentive for posting informative information, could you please elaborate? (Unless you meant the rest of your paragraph, in which case, allow me to retort.)

Posts don't start off invisible. They start off generally equal and only those who have shown the ability to contribute to the community in a good way get a bit of a head start. Moderation relies on those individuals who contribute the most to the community, and not the clueless. The clueless ones don't get mod points. And when

That's one way to look at it, but that's like saying that human interaction has no worth. Slashdot is at a much higher level than click spam games because even though its just text on a screen, someone is behind the keyboard conversing with you. Face to face interaction is at a higher level than that, but that doesn't mean text to text interaction is at the same level of click spam games.

The vast majority of what happens in farmville is interacting with a constructed world with a constructed set of rules

genre of games is largely just 'brain hacks that exploit human psychology in order to make money,' which continue to work even when the users are openly told what's going on.

Of course they are, but so is everything else. Slashdot exploits human psychology (why exactly am I posting this? I am spending my time and energy and not getting anything tangible in return) in order to make money. Ever felt pressured by your better half to buy a small piece of metal (jewelery) for $1000 dollars or a tiny bottle of water (perfume) for $100? Those also continue to work even after the users are told what's going on.

Every month I get a credit to my Paypal account, it's usually $50-100 . I think I get around $1 per +5 post, and I get like $0.25 per mod point I spend on behalf of Microsoft. I get the statement that itemizes the payment in my email each month, but I never bother to read it.

Dude, if you're posting here and not getting paid, you're really wasting your time. Send me your contact info via email at slashdot_shill_127@microsoft.com, I'll sign you up for the program -- I think I get a $25 referral bonus if you maintain high karma and moderate weekly for six months.

I guess in case of posting, there is some kind of a psychological need to give your opinions to other people and have them approve, even if anonymous as most of us are here. In case of jewelery and perfume, vanity I guess (not in the sense of looking good - that can be accomplished, or not, for a lot less money. I mean in the sense of somebody spending a lot of money on you). In any case, irrational human behavior exploited for money.

"Game designer and academic Ian Bogost announces Wank Clicker, a Facebook game implementing the mechanics of the Facebook-games genre stripped to their core. You get a wank, which you can click on every six hours. You earn additional clicks if your friends in your pasture also click. You can buy premium wanks with 'mooney,' and also use your mooney to buy more clicks."

Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to replace "click" with "wank" instead?

While this is slightly off topic, I find it interesting how many people view their labor or offered services as some sort of con. For example,

In cinema and theater, we often hear about method acting, a technique by which actors try to create the situations, emotions, and thoughts of their characters in themselves in order to better portray them. In creating Cow Clicker, I rather felt that I was partaking of method design, embracing the spirit and values and ideals of the social game developer as I toed the lines between theory, satire, and earnestness. The Internet is paralyzing because it contains so much potential information. Even over the few days I spent developing Cow Clicker, I found myself watching people play, listening to feedback, and imagining changes. I "listened to my players" and made enhancements far beyond what was reasonable for a work of carpentry or a simple parody. It's hard for me to express the compulsion and self-loathing that have accompanied the apparently trivial creation of this little theory-cum-parody game. Have I fully represented the distillation I hoped to accomplish? Or is some feature missing? And ought I not to add it if so? Where's the vampire cow or the werewolf cow or the cthulhu cow? Ought I not to make them? Perhaps I became consumed myself. Such is the spirit of the day, it would seem: mundane, outward obsession whose worst trick is to disguise itself as fruitfulness.

And his quote of Zynga CEO, Mark Pintus is relevant, "I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away." Where comes the need to disparage what benefits we provide to others?

You sometimes discover tht the thing you despise only exists because someone else actually likes it. So your attempt at Parody become a enjoyed by those that like the thing you despise.

Another great example of this effect is Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle definitely grew to dislike Holmes (hence the attempt to kill him off) and some claim Doyle originally intended Holmes as a parody of detectives.

Me, I don't think 'failing to realize something is a parody' is an insult to the intelligence of people. Instead, I feel it is a failure of the creators. It indicates they have simply have not gone too far.

For a better parody of simplified online games, look at SMBC Theater [smbc-theater.com]

The only question that matters is: do people who play Farmville (etc) have fun doing so?

If so, then it is a perfectly legitimate form of entertainment, and may well be worth the money they spend on it - not any less so than hardcore gamers playing Fallout or HL2. The latter can similarly be simplified to the point of "you shoot things so that you can shoot more things", and from there on to "you push the button so that you can keep pushing the button", but it misses the crucial point - somewhere along that line of simplification, you lose that quantity called "fun".

It's like taking some gourmet dish, decomposing it down to raw protein, fat, carbs and minerals, blending them, and saying that the disgusting result is somehow representative of the original food. It is, in some way, but it's not the way that matters.

It's like taking some gourmet dish, decomposing it down to raw protein, fat, carbs and minerals, blending them, and saying that the disgusting result is somehow representative of the original food. It is, in some way, but it's not the way that matters.

You do that and people won't eat it. The interesting thing here, at least from what I can tell, is that you do that to games and a lot of people will still eat that crap up - to the consternation of a lot of the rest of us.

Well they didn't go quite to that level here. If the "game" consisted of just a single black rectangle that you'd have to click when the counter gets to a certain number, and depending on how fast you click on it, the counter counts slower or faster, do you think people would still play it?

Then again, sugar is pretty basic stuff, and yet it's sweet and tasty in and of its own - even if much better in pastry.

I don't think there's a one-dimensional score of "fun" that's the "only" thing that matters. Different media have different mixtures of qualities: they provoke thought, entertain, addict, inspire, horrify, bore, explain, question, etc. And I think it makes some sense to look at why people are drawn to different media, and what we're getting out of them. What's compelling about reality TV, for example, and how is that similar or different to what's compelling about Futurama, or about Seinfeld, or about 24? A

You have to realize though that to the average person being able to do more things per day seems like a benefit to them rather than a loss. If you play the game and max out within 5 minutes, the chances of them coming back are slimmer than if it takes them a lot longer to "max out".